Friday Focus 03/01/20 – Making the most of having festive fun with family

Happy new year to you all! I’ve enjoyed having a bit of a blog break over the festive period and making the most of family time together. Christmas and the start of a new year is a tough time for us since Jessica died, but it helped to go away again and spend our second Christmas at Coombe Mill. The children thoroughly enjoyed their stay, and it was lovely to have Grandma and Grandad join us too.

 

 

Our Christmas celebrations were spread out over almost a week as we then spent a couple of days visiting my family before coming home and opening the presents that didn’t come with us to Coombe Mill.

 

 

We’ve also enjoyed getting outdoors as a family over the festive period and taking part in #12dayswild – getting outside each day during the 12 days of Christmas – and joining in with Thimble and Twig and The Ladybirds’ Adventures for their Wild about Winter challenge, all about getting children outside each day in January. I don’t know whether we’ll manage all the suggested activities for the month, but we’ll give it a go!

 

 

Things that have made me smile over the last couple of weeks

• Singing with Sophie at the lunchtime carol service at church, and then hearing her sing the first verse of Once in Royal David’s City as a solo at the Sunday morning carol service a couple of days later.

 

• Catching up with friends at their annual Christmas drinks evening.

 

• Seeing how much the children enjoyed feeding the animals on the feed run each morning at Coombe Mill.

 

 

• A day out at the Eden Project.

 

 

• Seeing robins nearly everywhere I went over the Christmas period. They felt like little reminders from Jessica to let us know she is still with us.

 

• Getting out for a walk on Christmas Eve and visiting Lanhydrock.

 

 

• Seeing how Sophie took as much pleasure from watching other people open presents as she did from opening her own, and the way she really took her time to appreciate each of them.

 

• Braving the rain on Boxing Day and going for a walk around Padstow.

 

 

• Finding a couple of geocaches and feeding the ducks on a walk around Buriton.

 

 

• Listening to the children giggling over the gulls fighting over the food when going to feed the ducks on a walk around Petersfield Heath.

 

• Sophie trying to put on make-up all by herself.

 

 

• Going to the park so that Sophie could try out the roller-skates she got for Christmas.

 

• Watching the children having fun together in one of Jessica and Sophie’s favourite spots. It’s taken me nearly two years to be able to face going back there. I was glad I did though, especially when a little robin appeared as if to tell me that Jessica approved of us going back there.

 

 

• Catching up with one of hubby’s old school friends who now lives in Australia, but was back in the UK over Christmas and New Year.

 

• Going on a penny hike in Langley Park and having fun tossing a coin to decide which direction we went in at each fork along the way.